The decline of journalism over the past 20 years or so would shock your grandfather, who lived in news' heyday.  Investigative journalism is dead.  Main stream media no longer reports the facts... it reports an agenda.  Reporters are now less valued and more overworked than ever.  Today's reporters have grown lazy about verifying facts and have become a staid, incurious bunch.  They no longer want to tell both sides of the story.  They simply repackage corporate and government press releases without verifying anything or providing any balance to the story.  They are nothing more than media puppets.  The bad news is that corporations can now pretty much write their own news, true or false.  The other bad news is that you need to look elsewhere for the truth.  There is no good news.   Journalists say that the internet ruined the news industry, but perhaps the news industry ruined itself by losing its impartiality and accuracy to corporate overlords.

And Invenergy took full advantage of it on Monday, pumping out stories like this AP blurb that was sent around the country to use as filler.  What does it say?

Where's the mention of "Tiger Connector" which is a 40-mile transmission extension through virgin ground?  There's "some" more farmers who are going to be furiously opposed to that.   How did this happen?  Invenergy's press release, news conference, and the fact that the average reporter had about 10 minutes to spend on this story combined to create a "story" full of non-news that buried the real news of an expansion of GBE's route and intent to use eminent domain in Missouri.

As you'll notice in the press release, the Tiger Connector is buried on page 2, past the bulleted list of important points.  No reporter read that far.  They stopped at the bulleted list because it was there that Invenergy had so conveniently summarized the important points.  But those weren't the important points.  They were just complete nonsense and fluff designed to bury the Tiger Connector story.  And it worked.  Thanks a lot, lazy reporters.

Also take a look at GBE's website.  Where's the Tiger Connector?  Oh, here it is, one page deep, where a curious reporter would never find it.  And it's not part of the "Route" page where someone would look for the route of the project.  It doesn't exist on the route.  It has its own separate tab, which is unexplained, and the page contains nothing of any value to anyone.  I've been doing transmission for nearly 15 years now and I've never seen a new transmission project rolled out with so little actual information.  There aren't even any maps for residents of newly affected counties to see.  It doesn't even mention where this project might want to go.  It's almost like Invenergy is HIDING this new proposal.

Is Invenergy embarrassed that it has spent so much time and money on a route that isn't even viable for the project because it could not connect to the grid at any points even close to the route it has been buying and condemning for years?  Is Invenergy embarrassed because it still doesn't have any customers aside from the loss-leader municipality contract for only "up to" 250 MW?

Nah, I think they did this on purpose as a ploy to keep this information from any landowners who could object to the plan and challenge it at the PSC.  If there is no information about it in the news, nobody would know.  If the information is hard to find on GBE's website, nobody will find it.  If they do find it, there is no detail that might set an affected landowner off.  If GBE doesn't mail notification letters to affected landowners until AFTER the news conference, and dangerously close to the "Open House" dog and pony show "meetings," nobody would know.  We have yet to see one of these notifications show up, but they may be designed to look like a junk mail postcard you'd toss right into the trash without reading.  If that happens, nobody would know.  GBE didn't "announce" the details of its Open House meetings until AFTER the news conference, therefore the media would not publish that information and nobody would know about it.

Here's the information.  Spread it around because GBE is hiding it and the media isn't interested in public notice.

Got it?  The information for landowners is only available for 12 days.  If you miss that time frame, or the meetings (like say, you did something completely outrageous like GO ON VACATION in the middle of summer), then you're out of luck.  You don't get any information.  That's outrageous!

Ya know... real public notice that isn't actually trying to HIDE things is always sent to the media, who could help notify the public.  What are you trying to pull Invenergy?

Invenergy says Tiger Connector is just a small change and the story is elsewhere.  No sane person would believe that! Maybe opposition doesn't need GBE to help tell their story.  Maybe Invenergy is about to get slammed.  There's no way they're getting this through the PSC as a minor change that nobody minds.  In fact, the Missouri PSC said it was not a "change" and that Grain Belt Express has to file a whole new application for these changes.  Oops!  Nice try, Invenergy, but did you actually think that was going to work?

Next, let's look at those manufactured talking points Invenergy fed to the press and analyze how useful they actually are, and whether they have a chance of biting back.

GBE will now be the equivalent of 4 new nuclear power plants.  Sorry, but GBE does not generate energy.  Maybe they meant that it could deliver the equivalent of 4 new nuclear power plants, if it actually had interconnection requests to inject that much power (but that's a different blog). But where would that power be generated?  Not in Missouri.  It would be generated elsewhere and imported.  And if Missouri imported the power of 4 nukes located in Kansas, then an equivalent amount of Missouri generation would close, maybe even actual nuclear plants, like the Callaway Generating Station owned by Ameren that employs a lot of people and pays a lot of taxes in Callaway County.  Ya know, maybe this wasn't really a smart talking point.

Investment increases to $7B.  How in the world did GBE go from its historic $2B price tag under Clean Line Energy Partners to today's $7B price tag?  Even with today's sky-high inflation, that's impossible.  Even the cost of the Tiger Connector couldn't get this transmission project to $7B.  Maybe there's more to this story than a transmission line.

What's that you say?  $7B of new wind projects?  So the investment isn't just a transmission line?  What'cha building, Invenergy, and where's the check on your market power when you're "negotiating" with other wind developers to take service from the line?  No chance that Invenergy could negotiate a better price with itself than it would negotiate with a competitor.  No chance at all...

Invenergy trots out the same old, tired "customers" who got the deal of a lifetime to take service at below cost rates.  I notice these customers didn't figure prominently in Invenergy's fluffy press release.  Invenergy found some new friends to "cheer" for it.  2-4-6-8 What are we here to validate? Rah! Rah! Rah!

Magical savings.  Because Invenergy hired some company to toss a word salad that concludes there will be all these magical savings that real people just can't figure out.  It's all made up crap and they won't show you their math.  You're supposed to trust the results.  But without seeing the figures used to calculate these savings, it cannot be verified.  They could have put anything in their equation (and maybe they did!).  It's not just you... this savings report doesn't make sense to anyone I know.

Advocacy groups.  I really don't think this needs an explanation.  Gimme an S.  Gimme an H.  Gimme an I.  Gimme an L.  Gimme another L.  What does that spell?  Rah!  Rah!  Rah!

"Some farmers."  How about "the vast majority of agricultural land owners along with their non-agricultural neighbors"?  "Some" would more appropriately apply to the advocates, because they're so few in number.  But, despite the backhanded attempt to minimize opposition, some farmers still managed to pollute Invenergy's dream story.  That's the best a lazy press could do. 

There were a few other giggles in the few stories that were original journalism.  I particularly liked this blurb:

Not only does it require additional approvals.  It requires a WHOLE NEW APPLICATION.

And then there's this:

Right, mystery customers.  The same ones that have failed to buy the 250 MW leftover from the last offering.

Invenergy carefully created a whole stack of hay to hide its "we need a new connection point" needle.  But all that hay may end up being too hard to chew.

I have to admit I've never been a fan of FERC's new Office of Public Participation.  Created by Congress in the 1970's, the office was only recently funded and came into being.  The idea of the office is that "the public" can use it as a liaison to learn how to "participate" in FERC proceedings.  This part sort of makes my eyes roll back in my head a bit.  I've been "participating" at FERC since before "public participation" was cool.  It really wasn't that hard to figure out.  I'm not sure an OPP would have actually been helpful, probably a bunch of misdirection and discouragement from participating.  Anyhow, it's not like "the public" actually pushed to finally create this office because they needed an education about how to participate.  It was the statute's language about intervenor funding that appealed to the advocacy groups who pushed the OPP into being.  They saw a quick pay day for their bleary legal work at FERC advocating for special interests that have other sources of funding.  It was all "belly up to the bar" old boys, we're going to get paid to file clueless, useless documents at FERC.  It has never been about funding "public" landowners and communities adversely affected by FERC's actions.  Instead, self-appointed "public advocates" and special interest and political groups have shoved their way to the front of the chow line to make sure there's nothing left for regular folks whose property or business is impacted by FERC actions.  This is how intervenor funding programs have worked in individual states, where special interest groups intervening to support the utilities plan to build things have sucked up all the funding, leaving affected landowners with nothing.

But, anyhow, this crap office is already giving itself a crap reputation with "the public."  The FERC Office of Public Participation Director, Elin Katz, was recently quoted during a webinar for WIRES (the voice of the electric transmission industry!)  You might want to ponder why Elin was hob nobbing at an industry shindig and not in a tool shed gathering in your community. 

Elin appears to have used the term "NIMBY" to refer to grassroots opposition to new transmission lines.

This is so horrifying, it's hard to know where to begin.

NIMBY?  The FERC employee in charge of encouraging the public to participate in FERC proceedings has called the public "NIMBYs"?  Does she know that's a pejorative insult to grassroots groups?  I'm sure she'd never use a racial slur, but yet she thinks belittling and marginalizing public participation is okay?  She ought to be fired.

Better education?  Again, Elin insults "the public" by calling them uneducated.  As if grassroots groups need to be "educated" about impacts to their communities by some woman who hates them, peering out from her ivory tower in Washington, DC.  There are no benefits to communities impacted by transmission lines that can outweigh the detrimental impacts.  Elin telling "the public" that there are "benefits" is not going to change anyone's mind.  What a completely ignorant approach to interacting with "the public."  Did she get that idea from the industries she actually works for?  She ought to be fired.

And what about her apparent disconnect between gas pipelines and electric transmission?  Somehow the landowners affected by pipelines matter, but the landowners affected by electric transmission don't?  That's not about the landowners, it's about politically-motivated ideology related to energy source.  It's not about the "public" at all.  She ought to be fired.

Disruptive activities?  That's called "mostly peaceful protest".  It's a new thing invented during the pandemic.  Transmission opposition is unlikely to engage in those kinds of things.  Our protests are more along the lines of free speech, due process, and public participation.  If she wants to squelch free speech and due process of "the public" she's not a good fit.  She ought to be fired.

Elin is the WRONG person to be assisting "the public" with participating in electric transmission proceedings at FERC.  It's obvious she believes that "large-scale power lines are needed to decarbonize the grid."  She's already weighed in on the side of the utilities and environmental groups and against "the public" who would be affected by FERC's actions.  She ought to be fired.

If I wasn't disgusted enough by FERC's OPP before reading this news blurb, I'd be pretty disappointed.  What a disgusting creature.  She ought to be fired.

According to this article, Arkansas PSC Chairman Ted Thomas said that he'd rather have gonorrhea than the Plains and Eastern Clean Line.  Hardee-harr-harr.

According to the same article, U.S. Department of Energy transmission facilitator Michelle Manary also thought making funny jokes about Plains & Eastern at some boring transmission "summit" was smart.

Hardee-harr-harr, Michelle.  You're a bigger comedian than Ted.

Poor widdle Michelle has battle scars from fighting all those nasty landowners and their lawyers and elected representatives.  I'm so sad for her.

News flash for Michelle!  The other side also has battle scars after being treated like dirt under Michelle's big government boot.  They also have drained bank accounts, lost sleep, no free time, postponed plans for their properties, and a long period of their life filled with uncertainty and frustration.

And it all happened because the federal government acted politically to put its thumb on the scale for Clean Line.  In the end, it was all just a gigantic waste of time and money.

Once bitten, twice shy, Michelle?  What's she going to do with her new authority to act politically to put a thumb on the scale for merchant transmission?

But wasn't Plains & Eastern a specific transmission project?  One less popular than gonorrhea?  One that scarred everyone?  I guess Michelle's scars aren't so bad after all.

Hardee-harr-harr.  You two are about as funny as stepping in dog poo.

The U.S. Department of Energy has finally allowed the public comments on its Transmission Facilitation Program to be available to the public.

After DOE stated that it wasn't sure about making them public, you responded by filing comments asking for the comments to be publicly accessible.

And here they are.  Click on the "Browse All Comments" tab.

Just imagine what would have happened without your participation?

Now just because the comments are public doesn't mean they're easily accessible.  The regulations dot gov website is a hot mess.  It's not like you can just go down the list and download the comments... for some reason their order gets scrambled every time you download one.  It wasn't easy, but I managed to devise a way to download them all.

Haven't had time to read them yet though... except for one that I simply couldn't resist peeking at after downloading.  Invenergy seems pretty eager to get to the head of the chow line doling out capacity contracts.  Invenergy says it needs an iron clad 25 year contract that DOE cannot weasel out of in order to get projects financed, but it doesn't mention any projects by name.  And a bunch of other weasely stuff that I will write more about later.

What merchant transmission lines that need capacity contracts might Invenergy be talking about?

Please share any good comment finds you make in the comments.

Sunlight is the best disinfectant.  This quote's origin is murky, but its meaning is not.  A democratic government cannot operate in secret.  A government must be transparent to its citizens.  A government works for its citizens.  A government has no money of its own but collects the money it spends from its citizens.  There is never a good reason for a government to withhold information from the citizens it governs.

But yet the U.S. Department of Energy took a week to make a decision whether or not to publicly publish the more than 80 comments it received on its proposed rules/requirements for its new, taxpayer-funded Transmission Facilitation Program.

If you thought allowing the government to give 2.5 billion of your tax dollars to for-profit corporations owned by the political elite could be a bad idea... it's about to get a whole lot worse.

Noting that the DOE docket for TFP comments did not have the feature to browse submitted comments turned on, and being notified that

I emailed [email protected] to ask when comments would be publicly available.  I initially was told that they did not know if comments would be posted.  What?  What reason would there be to hide them?

Just today I was told that DOE had decided to make the comments available on the regulations.gov website.  However (there's always a fly in DOE's ointment) the comments would first have to be "reviewed" for personally identifiable information and "they need to be made 508 compliant."  DOE has no idea how long this may take.  I'm still waiting to see comments from a webinar last month that DOE promised would be posted.  *crickets*  It seems that this "review" and "compliance" is just an excuse to avoid posting comments while appearing to be open to the idea.

Don't tell me that the federal government's slicky regulations.gov website cannot perform this function but that the task must be manually performed by agency employees.  I'm not buying it.  This is nothing more than a bogus excuse to avoid transparency.

Even though DOE can't manage to publicly post comments, some of the commenters can manage to post their own comments on the web without all this bogus "review."

Such as RTO/ISO comments available here.
And PJM's specific comments available here.

The online comment receptacle says 86 comments were submitted before the deadline last night.  But yet you can't read any of them on regulations.gov, even your own.

Considering that DOE is poised to give away $2.5B of your hard-earned dollars to connected rich people to "facilitate" a bunch of new transmission we don't want or need, you'd think there should be a little sunshine within the program.  You'd think that the proposed application requirements and review criteria would be public information requiring independent evaluation.  Remember Solyndra?

Instead, DOE is keeping the comments of the potential recipients of your tax dollars hidden.  It's just the transmission merchants and the DOE employees.  No taxpayers or other commenters need to be involved.  In fact, if they don't post the comments, they could just delete yours with one click.

The inmates are running the asylum.

Drain the swamp.

Drag Dracula into the sunshine.

Who do these entitled little bureaucrats think they are?

If you want to help drag DOE Dracula into the sunshine, let them know you want to see the comments by emailing [email protected].

DOE’s Transmission Facilitation Program is a ship adrift without a compass. In its NOI/RFI, DOE makes several references to the “objectives” of the program with reference to the IIJA (Section 40106(j)(8)). This is a list of “considerations” for selecting projects, not a list of objectives for the TFP. Some of the “considerations”
are nothing more than meaningless word salad, such as: 1) will improve the resiliency and reliability of an electric power transmission system; 2) facilitate interregional transfer capacity that supports strong and equitable economic growth; and (3) contribute to national or subnational goals to lower electricity sector greenhouse gas emissions. There’s no way for DOE to accurately and objectively determine whether projects meet these considerations. What is “strong and equitable economic growth” and what expertise does DOE have evaluating the economy? It appears that the whole program is subjective, made-up, discombobulated meddling in the transmission planning and rates authority of the
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
If FERC is in charge of electric transmission planning through its jurisdictional planning authorities, what authority or expertise does DOE have to plan “economic”
transmission, and how might DOE’s actions interfere or conflict with FERC’s authority to control transmission planning? Likewise, how do DOE’s financial giveaways to merchant transmission companies interfere or conflict with FERC’s negotiated rate authority for merchant transmission, which depends on market forces to keep rates in check in exchange for little regulation? At its webinar, DOE personnel claimed they were consulting with FERC, however that consultation is not being done in a transparent manner. At the very least, DOE needs to explore how its actions affect planning and rates under FERC’s jurisdiction through a transparent, official rulemaking. We need to know who is in charge of what, and how the “whole of government” process will work.
It was chilling to hear over and over again during the webinar how closely DOE is already working with transmission developers to design the system whereby it will hand over taxpayer funds to these for-profit companies. DOE must pull itself out of the swamp to ensure that its actions under this program are transparent and aboveboard.    Remember Solyndra? DOE’s current approach to this program does not serve electric consumers. The electric consumer taxpayers DOE is supposed to be serving have been completely ignored in favor of playing political footsie with elite, connected, commercial developers.
In Question 2, DOE asks what information it should seek from applicants to evaluate host community benefits, environmental justice, and also makes reference elsewhere in the RFI to community engagement and outreach. DOE states, “The description of community and stakeholder engagement should include concerns
raises (sic), issues resolved in writing, and issues outstanding.” However, DOE proposes getting all its information about community benefits, outreach, engagement, and issues from the developer in the application process. The developer is NOT an unbiased source of information and DOES NOT speak for affected communities. DOE must perform public “listening tours” and/or public hearings in host communities, where project information is presented and the public itself can inform DOE about its concerns. This is the only way DOE is going to get the truth about community engagement: by engaging with the community.
Anything less than true community engagement is self-serving fabrication. DOE must meaningfully consult with communities and landowners affected by its actions
before the project receives TFP benefits. Justice begins when every person has a voice.
Also in Question 2, DOE asks: “To what extent should DOE consider additionality of outcome on these dimensions?” This word salad makes no sense to real people outside the D.C. political bubble. “Additionality” is not a word in my dictionary. I hereby request that DOE revise and reissue the portions of its RFI that are written in millennial trendy-speak so that the rest of America can understand what it is asking.
DOE can do much better using plain language, but creating cryptic and subjective word puzzles is being used to avoid clear rules and definition. For instance, what does this statement mean? “Facilitate interregional transfer capacity that supports strong and equitable economic growth.” Where has it been determined that
expanded interregional transfer capacity grows the economy? While it may boost the economy of a location that exports energy, it harms the economy of a location
that imports energy, instead of producing its own. This is an unproven statement turned into an “objective”. It is building transmission for the sake of building transmission and then pretending that it provides some benefit.
Transmission planning is not a DOE responsibility. FERC’s regional planning entities are the only experts. Asking a transmission developer to provide “evidence demonstrating that the proposed project is consistent with regional transmission plans and priorities” without consulting the actual regional planning authorities is more self-serving wordsmithing. DOE must require a review and independent report of the jurisdictional planning authority to make this determination.
DOE also proposes that the developer provide it with an estimate of the project’s timeline when it files an application. DOE says that projects for its first solicitation
must “be in commercial operation by December 31, 2027.” Five years or less to complete a transmission project is extremely unrealistic and the developer’s time
line is nothing more than hopes and dreams. All above-ground, greenfield transmission projects will be vehemently opposed by affected landowners and host
communities and will therefore face regulatory and legal delays. DOE must cancel its agreements and payments to a transmission project that does not meet its
operational deadline, or there’s no point in having one in the first instance. Perhaps DOE should set more realistic deadlines. 2027 is not going to happen.
Question 8 is another application requirement that is likely to be completely concocted by the applicant. Determining that “the eligible project is unlikely to be
constructed in as timely a manner or with as much transmission capacity in the absence of facilitation” provided by the TFP is like asking what color tails unicorns would have if they were real. It is impossible to determine how, or even if, TFP participation would be effective in forcing construction of unneeded transmission projects, or if it would simply act as a burr under the saddle of state utility commissions to deny approval of a TFP project. It doesn’t seem like DOE has done anything to consult with the state regulators who decide whether transmission projects are beneficial for consumers.
DOE proposes that it will receive all information on which it bases its decision from the entity that will receive the benefit. This is an open invitation for the applicant to
mislead DOE, such as occurred with Solyndra. DOE absolutely must get more of its required information from impartial sources.
Question 12 asks: “What equity, energy and environmental justice concerns or priorities are most relevant for the TFP? How can these concerns or priorities be addressed in TFP implementation?” If the TFP is truly about facilitating the timely construction of needed transmission, the DOE’s biggest concern should be requiring program projects to eliminate burdensome impacts on host landowners and surrounding communities. Rebuilding existing lines to increase their capacity, and siting new lines on existing rail and road rights of way is an innovative and workable plan to effectively mitigate impacts and neutralize opposition. Buried transmission also eliminates impacts. A buried transmission line on existing rail rights of way would not inspire delaying opposition. All of this is now technologically and financially feasible and is being used by merchant transmission developers. Landowners and communities are not fooled by platitudes and fake
mitigation, much less bribes to local elected officials to look the other way. The only way to prevent costly, delaying opposition is to not cause any impacts at all. DOE should require TFP projects to be sited on existing rights of way and buried, eliminating a need for eminent domain. Otherwise, DOE is simply spinning its wheels and wasting taxpayer funds.
It appears that DOE has learned absolutely nothing from its failed Section 1222 Clean Line Energy Partners “participation”. After many years, and many millions,
spent trying to assist a merchant transmission developer to obtain private property using federal eminent domain, the project collapsed under its own weight when it
couldn’t find any customers. Even if DOE takes the additional step of becoming the missing “customer” this time around, it won’t solve the merchant transmission
problem. The only successful merchant transmission projects are the ones that have committed customers before being built. Speculative merchant transmission
without committed customers is a demonstrated failure. Load-serving entities do not want to import generation from other states or regions when they could use
local resources just as cheaply. As regulated entities, it is about cost. It’s also about buying the milk instead of owning the cow. Regulated public utilities would rather
build and own their own transmission and generation assets that earn a return than
pay to use the assets of other companies. There is simply no incentive here for new customers to sign merchant transmission capacity contracts.
During the May 26 webinar, DOE personnel claimed that capacity contracts were not just for merchant transmission. Except that’s not true at all. Only merchant
transmission uses capacity contracts. Traditional transmission is cost-allocated to captive ratepayers.
Although not in DOE’s area of expertise or jurisdiction, it is imperative that DOE educate itself on the concept of utility regulation if it is going to be successful administering this program. Regulation takes the place of competitive markets to ensure just and reasonable rates in a monopoly environment. Regulated public utilities building traditional, cost-allocated, regionally-planned, transmission projects are unlikely to participate in the TFP. It is clear to anyone in the industry that the TFP was designed to give unfair advantage to unregulated, unplanned, unneeded, unfunded merchant transmission projects.
What is merchant transmission? It is a market-based concept, where instead of cost-of-service rates set by regulators in a monopoly situation, the project competes
with others to attract voluntary customers who negotiate market-based rates with the project owner. There can be no captive customers for merchant transmission,
and competition between customers is the mechanism that keeps the rates just and reasonable. The merchant can only charge as much as the market for its product
allows.
Merchant transmission must receive negotiated rate authority from FERC in order to negotiate with voluntary customers to sell its capacity. In evaluating negotiated
rate applications, FERC employs a four-factor analysis to examine: (1) the justness and reasonableness of the rates; (2) the potential for undue discrimination; (3) the
potential for undue preference, including affiliate preference; and (4) regional reliability and operational efficiency requirements. In examining the justness and
reasonableness of the rates, FERC considers whether the merchant transmission developer has assumed the full market risk for the cost of constructing its proposed project and is not building within the footprint of the developer’s (or an affiliate’s) traditionally-regulated system. In such a case, there are no captive customers who would be required to pay the costs of the project. The Commission also considers whether the developer or an affiliate already owns transmission facilities in the
region where the project is to be located, what alternatives customers have, whether the developer is capable of erecting any barriers to entry among competitors, and whether the developer would have any incentive to withhold capacity. The IIJA requires DOE to purchase up to 50% of the capacity of a qualifying merchant project, even though DOE will not use the capacity to transmit energy. DOE is not a voluntary customer, but a customer of last resort, who is captive to assume the market risk of the project. Participating TFP transmission projects are neither traditional cost-of-service projects, nor market-based merchant projects, but something else entirely that must be regulated to ensure just and reasonable rates under the FPA. After the IIJA removed the market-based framework by requiring DOE to fund merchant projects, there is no longer a mechanism to keep rates in check. The merchant can charge whatever it wants, and if DOE is the only customer it must pay the rate demanded. DOE will certainly pay a higher rate than a voluntary customer competing with others for service. Therefore, the merchant projects funded by DOE do not qualify for negotiated rate authority from FERC, but must be regulated in some fashion. In response to RFI question 11, this requires a formal rulemaking at the Commission.
DOE must also consider market power when evaluating TFP applicants. This requires an independent analysis, or report, and should be verified by regional transmission organizations and/or market monitors. Also, DOE should prohibit private, generation tie line projects from participating in the TFP program. All eligible projects must offer their full capacity to all using negotiated rates.
In response to question 13, a “market analysis” prepared by a transmission developer seeking to receive funding so that it doesn’t have to compete in an actual market is inherently suspect. Instead, DOE must do its own research in actual markets to determine whether the expected customers actually need the generation and transmission service DOE would be “facilitating.” It’s not enough to recite political platitudes about interregional transmission and decreasing greenhouse gases, it’s about matching offered generation with customer need. If there are no customers, then the transmission is not needed. Just because generation is offered does not mean remote customers are forced to buy it. Load-serving entities are perfectly capable of doing their own analysis to decide which generation and transmission capacity would be economic and needed by their customers. Even the TFP cannot force customers to buy unwanted generation or transmission capacity.
If there was an actual, competitive market for the capacity of a TFP project, then it wouldn’t need funding in the first place. Only a merchant transmission project
without customers would find the program useful to build transmission for which there is no market, and no customers. The project would be a literal road to nowhere, used by no one, not delivering power anywhere, but funded by American taxpayers. It’s a mind-bogglingly bad idea!
The IIJA and DOE seem to believe that the TFP will “encourage” voluntary customers for merchant transmission. We’re not painting Tom Sawyer’s fence here. Just because DOE purchases transmission capacity that no one else wants does not mean that everyone will suddenly want it due to some weird, new form of government peer pressure. If customers want to purchase capacity on a merchant transmission project, they will purchase it directly from the developer after determining that the service is financially beneficial to their customers. The financial equation for the customer will not change because of DOE’s purchase, unless DOE plans to sell the service for less than it paid in order to subsidize customers who take unwanted, unused capacity off its hands. It does not appear that such a plan would meet the statutory obligations of the IIJA, which requires DOE to replenish the TFP fund on a rolling basis. Selling capacity at a loss will eventually deplete the fund in its entirety.
In response to question 19, there is no way to “encourage” someone to buy something they passed up the first time it was offered unless it is offered at a lower
price or given away for free, neither of which fits the statute in question.
In response to question 25, yes, DOE should require a TFP project to already have signed contracts equivalent to the percentage of capacity it is seeking to have the
DOE purchase. Under no circumstances should DOE be the only customer, or the customer purchasing the most capacity of a project. When a developer resorts to
having DOE fund its project with capacity contracts that indicates that there is no market interest in the project and DOE will be unlikely to unload its capacity on voluntary customers in the future.
When DOE signs a capacity contract for up to 40 years of non-service “service”, it must reserve the full contract price to be set aside from the TFP fund so that DOE
does not later renege on its contract if it signs multiple contracts it does not have the funds to support. Signing multiple contracts under the presumption that one or
more would sell to others and replenish the fund before future capacity payments are due on other projects is, at its most basic level, a pyramid scheme. DOE should not use taxpayer funds to run a pyramid scheme.
In response to question 26, the TFP project must pay back DOE first before enriching itself with other capacity contracts. Any contracts signed after DOE commits should sell DOE’s capacity first.
In response to question 27, DOE could include a timeline in its capacity contract that requires the TFP project to sell a certain percentage of DOE’s capacity per year in
order to continue the contract. If a project is unable to sell any additional capacity after contracting with DOE, this would provide an exit provision for DOE instead of
depleting the fund for 40 years paying for a road to nowhere.
In response to question 28, how would DOE even know if it was receiving a more favorable rate than other customers if it was the first (and only) mover? Without any other contracts negotiated to use as comparison, it is impossible to determine. In addition, requiring all other customers to pay a higher rate than DOE could doom the project to never finding additional customers if DOE likely contracted at a rate that was too high in the first place. There is no way for DOE to determine that the rate it negotiates is competitive, and this is why these merchant-variants must be regulated.
DOE is a contract patsy that will be used to prop up unneeded merchant transmission. DOE’s TFP is set up for failure by sticking the taxpayers with the bill for a 40-year contract because DOE is a poor, captive, politically-motivated negotiator. The fund will quickly be depreciated and never replenished.
Question 22 contemplates that DOE will be signing capacity contracts before a merchant transmission project begins commercial operation. In that instance,
payment should not commence until the project is in service. Nobody would pay for service it is not receiving. In addition, the contract should contain an escape clause
for DOE if the project fails to receive state or other permits in a timely fashion. DOE must not be obligated to making payments for 40 years on a transmission project that is never constructed.
Knowing that the TFP program is nothing more than a gift to merchant transmission developers who want to monetize gold plated (but unneeded) projects, DOE should be wary of funding the lifestyles of the rich and famous, well-connected elite who lobbied for this program, instead of facilitating used and useful transmission. In the interest of equity and justice, projects should be evaluated on the basis of financial need and funds awarded first to deserving minority-owned businesses. The TFP is not to provide funds for the elite to live high on the hog while “developing” unneeded merchant transmission. An investigation of the finances of the company and its investors should be carried out as part of DOE’s evaluation. DOE may have forgotten the largess of Solyndra, but the American taxpayers have not. We don’t need a repeat of robots that whistled Disney tunes, spa-like showers with liquidcrystal displays of the water temperature, and glass-walled conference rooms. How is the company spending taxpayer dollars, and more importantly, who is spending taxpayer dollars? Initial investigation shall be followed by yearly audits.
Speaking of Solyndra, DOE is headed to a new Solyndra of five fold proportions. The unverified, applicant supplied information DOE proposes it will use as the basis for its evaluation is ripe for false and misleading statements. In fact, DOE’s RFI actively encourages applicant companies to embellish and create a world of fantasy. DOE completely failed to use due diligence to verify information on Solyndra’s application and was politically influenced to look the other way while rubber
stamping the applications of connected individuals. When comparing the lessons of Solyndra to the way DOE has handled the TFP program so far, the parallels are stunning. DOE should absolutely re-study the lessons of Solyndra so that the same mistakes don’t get made a second time.
DOE’s Transmission Facilitation Program is a merchant transmission developer buffet of epic proportions that enables certain connected individuals to fill their pockets with taxpayer funds. I don’t believe any beneficial transmission will come of it. It’s just another gigantic waste of hardworking Americans’ tax dollars.
Quote from DOE’s Solyndra investigation:
“While not the focus of the investigation, we were mindful of the concerns that had been raised regarding possible political pressure applied in the Solyndra decisionmaking process. Employees acknowledged that they felt tremendous pressure, in general, to process loan guarantee applications. They suggested the pressure was based on the significant interest in the program from Department leadership, the Administration, Congress, and the applicants.”
https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2015/08/f26/11-0078-I.pdf
DOE must design the TFP so that this does not happen again. So far, DOE has failed the American taxpayer completely.

Build it and they will come only works in Hollywood.

Remember Solyndra?  I mean really remember... how the U.S. Department of Energy gave away more than half a billion of your taxpayer dollars to a for-profit company that lived large for several years before defaulting on the "loan" it had received?    Perhaps we could all use a refresher, now that the DOE is poised to give away another 2.5 billion of your hard-earned taxpayer dollars to a handful of elite rich guys who want to live large on it while it lasts... perhaps for the next 40 years.

Here's a good refresher article....

But it turned out that the company had puffed itself up on its DOE loan application and that it didn't have enough future revenue to pay off the loan.  It declared bankruptcy and its owners whistled Disney tunes off into the sunset.  No harm, no foul.  Worse than that, the government functionaries who furthered this scam also received no punishment.  The DOE Inspector General's report revealed just how much malarkey was going on, but ultimately nothing was done about it.

So why wasn't there due diligence at the DOE?

Well, guess what?  That same pressure is being used again to push new loans and revenue guarantees for speculative merchant transmission projects.  DOE has apparently learned NOTHING from Solyndra and its employees are having a grand time playing footsie with merchant transmission developers while sitting on a fresh pile of taxpayer money.  Your money!

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, passed by a bipartisan vote last year is now being implemented by the good political drones at DOE.  The IIJA gave DOE $2.5 Billion for its new Transmission Facilitation Program.  The "program" makes available new loans, public-private partnerships where the government kicks in some of your money to fund for-profit merchant transmission, and capacity contracts for new merchant transmission.  DOE seemed pretend surprised at a recent webinar that the only provision of the program that anyone is interested in is the capacity contracts.

The DOE has authority to sign capacity contracts with new transmission projects.  The capacity contract will purchase room on the transmission project to transmit electricity, however DOE doesn't serve any electric customers and has no use for it.  It will simply pay for something it will never use.  This purchase is supposed to inspire others to also buy capacity on the transmission project.  However, if these others had any use for the capacity, they could purchase it themselves without DOE involvement.  The problem is that nobody wants to purchase capacity on speculative merchant transmission projects.  DOE is likely to be the only "customer" propping up an unused and unneeded road to nowhere... through your backyard and productive agricultural property.

A merchant transmission project, first and foremost, must accept all financial risk for its unneeded, speculative project.  There can be no captive customers.  A successful merchant may negotiate rates with voluntary customers who may find its project useful.  But what if nobody finds it useful?  Then it fails, and the merchant loses his investment.  But, not anymore.... the federal government is going to step in to financially prop it up using your money.  This means we're going to suffer a lot more greedy merchants, stuffed egos with childish hairdos who belong to the elite political party in power.  These new elite rulers will spend their capacity contract money however they like... ugly orange offices with pictures of dead rock stars, renovated fire houses, and a lavish lifestyle on a fat salary playing transmission make-believe.

Does all this make you furious?  It should.  Michael Skelly's next transmission brain fart will be perpetrated on your dime.  Fortunately, you can tell DOE what you think about their new Transmission Facilitation Program during a public comment period that only runs until June 13.  Submitting a comment is quick and easy using this online form (click the little blue "comment" box at the top).  You can even make your comment anonymous. 

Have at it, folks!  Maybe Skelly's new robots will come programmed with a funeral dirge for his new ideas.

Did you manage to catch this story this week? Wind energy company kills 150 eagles in US, pleads guilty kind of made the rounds this week, but some people simply didn't care.  Now if a famous politician had killed 150 eagles on a hunting trip, it would have been 24/7 news.  But it was just one of America's biggest energy conglomerates killing eagles while it "saved the planet" by generating electricity from wind, so it wasn't big news.

The story tells us

But what does NextEra care?  It's raking in billions of dollars every year in the form of production tax credits for generating electricity from wind.  What's $8M between friends?  NextEra is simply giving the government its own money back... a drop in the ocean of riches NextEra has stuffed into its own pocket over the years.  I think NextEra has absolutely no remorse and will continue to kill as many birds as it wants.  If it shuts the turbines down to save the eagles, then it doesn't earn as much money from the federal government, who pays for energy actually generated.

You should be outraged by this.  But, more importantly, the "Big Green" organizations, like Sierra Club, should be outraged.  But I don't see any of the big organizations quoted in the article coming to the defense of eagles.

Why?  Remember this?  When the Sierra Club was taking money from the gas industry and calling natural gas a "bridge fuel" to a cleaner environment?  Are these big organizations now taking money from energy companies promoting big wind?  Where do these organizations get the cash that makes up their oversized budgets?  They get a lot of it from private "foundations", but where do the "foundations" get their cash?  Nobody seems to care.  Advocacy groups for big wind and solar get their money from electric utilities.  NextEra has a position on ACORE's board of directors.  ACORE doesn't even mention eagles.  None of the entities making money hand over fist building and operating renewable energy facilities seem to care about the eagles.

Sierra Club got in a bind because its national policies conflicted with its individual members who saw gas destroying their local environment.  The propaganda about "clean energy" we're all fed absolutely refuses to recognize that "clean energy" is also destroying our environment while purporting to save it.  It's only a matter of time until the big environmental organizations are pushed by local members to stand against massive, industrial scale big wind and solar plants. 

Perhaps it's coming sooner than they think...

Honestly, these guys just don't know how to play fair.  Several special interest groups have written a new law that ensures they will get their way in an ongoing FERC rulemaking.  Congress writes law.  Agencies write regulations that become the nuts and bolts of how the law Congress makes is carried out. 

Last year, FERC opened a rulemaking to make new regulations governing interstate transmission planning, cost allocation and generator interconnection.  FERC claimed its existing regulations had become unjust and unreasonable and no longer comported with the law Congress had made.  That's justification enough to change the regulations.

FERC sought comments on its new transmission rulemaking.  Lots of concerned companies, groups, and government officials responded, including a group of consumer organizations with a history of defending themselves against unneeded, unwanted transmission projects.  (See initial comments here, and reply comments here.)  FERC has the issue under consideration and has said it hopes to release a proposed rule by the end of this year.

However, last week Senator Sheldon Whitehouse introduced legislation he called the CHARGE Act.  (Connecting Hard-to-reach Areas with Renewably Generated Energy - Maybe they're only hard to reach because they are energy parasites who refuse to create any energy in their own back yards?).  The CHARGE Act is "endorsed by Public Citizen, Earthjustice, Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), New Consensus, Grid Strategies, and Digital Climate Action."  And it sounds incredibly familiar.  In fact, it's just a slimmed down version of these groups comments on FERC's transmission planning rulemaking docket.  Instead of allowing FERC to finish its rulemaking docket, these special interest groups have attempted to short-circuit and second guess FERC's process by having Congress enshrine the rule they want into law.  FERC might as well tear up all the stuff that hundreds of parties spent time and money creating... the spoiled babies are attempting an end run around FERC in order to get their own way in a FERC proceeding by going through Congress instead.

If this is the way things are going to proceed from now on, FERC might as well just stop doing anything except rubber stamping the political wish list of the party in power.  That's pretty much what it has been doing since at least 2017, anyhow. 

Maybe Congress needs to be reminded that when it created the DOE, it retained an impartial regulator (FERC) to be independent from DOE because the DOE was expected to be too political to regulate impartially and effectively?

At any rate, take a look at the CHARGE act and see if you can figure out who's missing from this FERC technical conference guest list:

This is a conference to determine transmission planning... what shall we build and where shall we build it?  Who's missing?  Landowners and affected communities.  They are the biggest stakeholders of all because they will be forced against their will to host new transmission planned by all these NIMBYs at the technical conference.  Of course they don't want to invite the people who are going to end up holding the hot potato of unwanted energy infrastructure to their conference.  It's a club of the chosen who can decide to conscript your home, your business, your economic prosperity, and your future, without giving you a seat at the table.

Here's another... who is missing from this transmission advisory committee?

Who's missing?  Landowners and affected communities, again.  The very people who would have to live with the new transmission.

It's not like they think landowners are represented by any of these groups.  It's clear in another part of the bill that landowners and affected communities are something that must be communicated with. 

The landowners and affected communities don't get invited to any committees or conferences though.  And it's not like they are excluding the entire public, just landowners and affected communities.  Tribal and environmental justice communities are both recognized as "the public" AND ALSO included in the committees and conferences  (go ahead, compare to the first two quotes I included).   This is obviously on purpose in order to exclude these very important stakeholders like they don't matter.

And then they wonder why transmission opposition forms and ends up cancelling or delaying their project?

I miss democracy.